They can call for whatever they want, it's going to happen in some shape or form. To be honest, any border controls between NI/ROI will be a nightmare for people and with the political situation disintegrating in NI again there couldn't be a worse time for it.
It's virtually impossible to have tight and effective immigration controls, and open EU border. Also if UK ever passes laws that allow produce with EU import restrictions to be available it will mean hard customs border too... NI is at a genuine risk of crisis, or soft Brexit.
Why are EU countries allowed to have borders but the USA cannot?
Genuinely curious.
On this side of the pond its double plus ungood badthink to support borders of any sort, which makes discussion about the importance of borders in UK/EU sound really weird on this side of the pond.
> Why are EU countries allowed to have borders but the USA cannot?
The USA has always had borders, and absolutely is allowed to have them.
> On this side of the pond its double plus ungood badthink to support borders of any sort
No, it's not. It's just one set of extremists as to what the rules should be at the border portrays any disagreement with them as being opposed to borders (the same group does the same kind of generalization on other issues as well) to avoid engaging in debate about the substance of their proposals on the rules. There's a very small minority of actual open borders supporters, and except for the one group that rhetoricallt conflates that small group with their larger opponents, they basically are irrelevant in policy debate.
The letter is written by one of the two parties involved. There's no guarantee that the other party agrees with anything it says, except for things agreed upon earlier; basically the fact that the UK can ask to leave the EU and that a two-year deadline applies.
